The most dangerous moment in the Ukrainian crisis so far may well have arrived. The security operations undertaken by the Kiev government have been received by Russia with alarm. "Events are beginning to develop under the worst case scenario," said one senior official in Moscow. As yet, amidst a torrent of social media and conflicting local reports, it is impossible to determine the extent of any casualties. But in a sense, it is not the facts but the perception of what is happening that matters. Russia's narrative has been clear. It sees itself as the champion of Ukraine's Russian-speakers in the east. With separatists taking over buildings in several Ukrainian cities, the Kiev authorities have effectively been goaded into a response. The question now is whether that response will be seized upon by Moscow as a pretext for military action.

Actually, I made a couple of blues. The original article said that overseas holdings are 1/2 to 2/3 not the 1/3 I quoted.I also quoted 600Mill and 300Mill for total foreign held currency.Of course they should read BILLIONS not millions.I can't believe no one picked me up on it. Perhaps you were the only member who read it! Still shouldn't make a lot of difference though maybe a mere 100billion!!

I was being poetic when I talked of actual dollar notes being used to pay for the T-shirts.

Even back in the '70's when I worked for a US bank in London, a section of the trading room was dedicated to deposits in what they then called "euro-dollars", which were defined as bank deposits denominated in dollars and held by anyone who was not a US citizen. They emerged during the first oil shock when Arabs accepted US dollars as payment for their then considered expensive oil, and some people even called them petro-dollars.

Now that would be an interesting statistic. The sum total of euro/petro/orwhatevertheyarecalledtoday-dollar deposits in the world, and what proportion of those are held in China.

The latest data shows that China's foreign reserves soared by $163bn in the third quarter to $3.66 trillion, one of the biggest jumps ever.

Mark Williams and Qinwei Wang from Capital Economic called the rise "astonishing". They estimate that China's central bank must have bought $70bn of foreign bonds last month in a frantic bid to hold down the currency.

What is really interesting is the comments on the article below the Ambrose piece.Although there are a number of arguments as to whether this is good or bad for China, you cannot argue with the figures. China is still buying USD denominated treasuries at a rate that makes your head hurt. As someone else once said, forget the jawboning, always follow the money.

When people say China holds a lot of US debt, I don't think this is limited to Government loan stocks. Rather China has been selling US citizens lots of cotton T-shirts, but rather than demanding payment in iPads, or gold, or even Swiss Francs, they have been accepting US dollar notes, and they've built up a collection as the cartoon suggests, as big as the great wall. And if this lot was ever dumped on the market and traded for gold, Swiss Francs or whatever, the mighty US dollar might start to take on the characteristics of the old Zimbabwe Dollar.

Accorbing to the US treasury, there was about 1.2 trillion dollars in hard currency in circulation as at June 2013. The estimates that between 1/2 and 1/3 is held by all overseas sources. Let us be generous and assume that half, $600mill is held by foreigners. Given that hard USD's are hoarded throughout Asia and Africa, one would be hard pressed to imagine thateven half of that total, $300 mill would be held in China. This is small bickies compared to the 5.6 trillion in debt that the US is up for.

Just as an aside on your use of Zimbabwe as an example. I was in that country last year, and they use USD as their official currency. You go to the ATM and you get USD.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has used his speech to the UN General Assembly to attack Iran's new president and warn against working with the Iranian government. He insists that Tehran still wants to destroy Israel, despite denials by its president Hassan Rouhani. Mr Netanyahu has warned Israel will act alone if it has to in order to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. He says the world shouldn't be fooled by Mr Rouhani's charm offensive, because he can't be trusted.

pretty hard to achieve if you are basing QE action on, among other factors, Labour participation and unemployment .. when these numbers due out Friday won't come as the bureaucrats are stood down

One thing appears near certain, the FED aimed for US unemployment figure doesn't have a hope in hell of being met, take into consideration the current debacle, add in the much more serious problem of the looming debt ceiling and to some it seems MORE QE rather than less is on the cards.

Tonight the ECB meet, who knows they may pre-empt the FED making for yet another interesting night in the NH.